


Borrowed Accents

by Zaniida



Series: Zaniida's Birthday Requests [5]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Accents, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Disabled Character, Female All Along, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, elbows-friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26052901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: Finch, as it turned out, was a master of accents.This is my POI offering for this year'sBirthday Prompt: Nonsexual Genderbending! Anything that plays with gender in any fashion (other than the most common/obvious one), that's what I'd like for my birthday. Fics, fan art, and other media most welcome!
Relationships: John Reese & Finch
Series: Zaniida's Birthday Requests [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1460173
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Borrowed Accents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hime/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Conversation with Miss Kittiwake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911238) by [Zaniida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida). 



> I try to get these prompts out with a good two-week gap, but this piece simply would not come together any faster than it did. Still, it's here: the follow-up to [A Conversation with Miss Kittiwake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911238/chapters/37089438). John's perspective on this mysterious bird-themed lady who's pulled him into her world.
> 
> As with previous years, I hope to get at least a couple of quick fics for my birthday (August 31st); the theme this year is **Nonsexual Genderbending**. Female All Along or Genderswap ( _oh noes! that weird alien rock turned Fusco into a girl!_ ) are obvious enough; also welcome would be crossdressing/drag, trans or intersex or genderqueer (any flavor), cross-gendered clones (or doubles from another dimension), or any AU with a core concept that plays with gender (Omegaverse (aka Alpha/Beta/Omega), Dom/sub verse, etc.).
> 
> (Technically, I wouldn't be too put off by fics that included sexuality, it's just not my preference.)
> 
> The point of the short timeframe is, as always, to encourage small, containable fics, rather than giant sprawling masterpieces. Y'know, so they don't add to that pile of fics you're already writing (oh do I understand this problem). Sorry it's only one week instead of two, but I did my level best.
> 
> Some challenge forms you could try, to keep this nice and short:
> 
> Pagefic
>     I find this the easiest challenge form: Fill up a page with words. If you write more than a page, go find something to condense or cut out. If you write less than a page, go find something to expand. (Don't get rid of all the white space, but generally fill the page with exactly as many words as will fit it.)
> Drabbles
>     A Drabble is 100 words exactly; a Double Drabble is 200, a Triple Drabble 300, a Pentadrabble 500, a Half-Drabble 50, etc.
>     (Some people use the word "drabble" to mean "a short fic" (I've seen it for fics over 1000 words), but we have plenty of words for that. I like "ficlet" myself.)
> Three-Sentence Fic
>     Three sentences, no more and no fewer. As simple or complicated as you like.
> Five Moments of (Nonsexual) Intimacy
>     Write five short scenes, one for each category of intimacy: Physical/Sensual, Emotional, Experiential, Secret Sharing, and Vulnerability/Acceptance. More details [here](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1439153).
> 
> So, if you care to, figure out something that you could complete in under a week, and post it on (or shortly before) my birthday. I hope to wake up to some nice presents!
> 
> _(For the MCU version of my Birthday Prompt, see[Somehow I Miss Box Socials](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25990351) (the Avengers dress in drag for a charity auction).)_
> 
> Content warnings in End Note. I am quite tired as I post this, having stayed up all night (it made today's logistics easier) and typing this in at 3 p.m. -- so if I happen to miss a tag or something, please let me know!

“And you can call me Finch,” the woman had said pleasantly, her lips quirking up ever so briefly in the hint of a smile, that first day.

(Future smiles would be few and far between, and he would learn to treasure them.)

* * *

Their next few encounters had left John puzzling over a number of details, not least of which was her accent. The core dialect was Western American, he was pretty sure of that, but there were little twists of sound and the occasional word choice that made him wonder if she’d been raised in New England, or then again perhaps Oklahoma, or Louisiana, or even in another country altogether, and just when he thought he’d managed to narrow it down another step she’d surprise him again.

Once he got to observe her in the field, the source of his confusion became apparent: Finch’s basic accent was not her accent in the first place.

The first straightforward accent that Finch pulled out was Midwestern, when she’d gone to watch over Theresa Whitaker and introduced herself as “Miss Kittiwake.” Her outfit was a bit more stylish than she wore back in the library, but John had been too busy trying to stop the hit to give more than a passing thought to the details.

Then Finch had shown up at the evidence lockup looking entirely too touristy and speaking with an unexpected Southern drawl (though without the dropped R’s). The little that she’d said kept rattling around in his brain for days, even after he’d gotten over the terror at seeing her in danger yet again, this time on his behalf.

Weeks later, in the diner, she’d presented herself with a rapid Manhattan accent, a tidy suit, and a tense, nervous energy, rushing off almost as soon as he’d gotten there, leaving him with only her note. Whatever connection they’d been establishing over the past few months seemed to have evaporated.

The reason was hardly a mystery: John had killed a man, deliberately and in cold blood, and Finch had listened to him do it. She might even have listened to him dispose of the body, in a lye bath, over the course of hours. With Stills, there was no other way to save the innocent, but Benton’s death had forced her to deal with the reality that the man she had drawn into her world killed people for a living, and that at any point he might kill again.

It was all but a miracle that John was able to take down an international terrorist gang and save both Judge Gates and his son without taking a single life, yet he managed it. Whether that affected Finch’s judgment of him, who could say? But he saw her again, in the same diner and under the same guise, and, though she still seemed wary of him, they did part with an olive branch: a soft tap on the menu and a “Chickpea stew; do give it a try sometime, it’s one of my favorites.”

As John looked over the menu, he recalled the day he’d tracked her down and surprised her at her work—and how, mere hours later, her desk had been cleared and her records erased as if she’d never even been in the building. Given that level of paranoia (“I’m quite a _private_ person”), it _meant_ something for her to show up twice in the same persona.

He’d been thinking of her guises as throwaway costumes: a quick mix of features, nothing too memorable, just enough to misdirect attention should anyone try to track her down. Whatever Finch felt like using at the time.

But she’d shown up twice, and in different suits. Similar style, different colors, same overall theme. And yes, she was rich enough to think nothing of buying two throwaway suits for a day’s work, but that seemed… off, somehow.

Was the persona location-based? Used for a single neighborhood, or even this specific diner? He filed the thought away and ordered breakfast, making a mental note to return during lunch hours sometime. Maybe he’d even see if Finch stuck with the same costume a third time.

When Finch tried to rescue Anja and her daughter from Ulrich Kohl, John got introduced to “Ms. Tanager” with her friendly Brooklyn accent and sharp but honest eyes; in the aftermath of the case, as John dealt with lingering pain and unpleasant reminders of his earliest days as a spy, he’d finally pieced together a few details that he should have realized earlier on.

Because where John switched surnames but stuck to the same basic character, where he picked up on accents but didn’t bother changing his own, Finch switched personas with uncanny ease, affecting everything about her: posture, gestures, expressions, energy, even her sense of social space, conversational timing, and the amount of eye contact.

And, of course, her speech. Finch, as it turned out, was a master of accents.

The personas he’d met so far all had names, and consistent features; slowly, he was getting to know them, as if Finch had a small army of sisters and was beginning to trust him enough to let him meet them all. Miss Kittiwake showed up again, a good all-purpose guise. Nervous Manhattan was Miss Piper; the relaxed Southern belle was Mrs. Bunting (husband, almost certainly fictional, deceased). Ms. Tanager called attention to her surroundings, and when she was with John she could be counted on to point out any birds they happened by.

A few of Finch’s personas were doctors; John met the first through a delirious haze as Finch wheeled him into a morgue and bargained for his life. “Dr. Siskin” wasn’t the medical sort (“One needn’t be trained in medicine to hold a doctorate,” as Finch reminded him later), but her no-nonsense North Dakota accent kept Dr. Madani on task as John faded in and out of consciousness.

“Also made me feel like less of a threat,” she asserted over boxes of Chinese, two days later, when John was settling into his recovery and felt well enough to start discussing his observations (and close enough to Finch that he was sure, by this point, that his curiosity wouldn’t make her shut down again).

“How so?”

“Well… not less of a threat _in general_ , but less of a threat compared to an accent that’s more local or more obviously exotic. Bring a man with a bullet wound to a morgue doctor, what’s your first impression?”

“Criminal activity. Gang violence.”

“Of course. The Dakotas are among the least likely sources of gang activity; my attempted message was that I am neither a local threat nor a foreign one. He’s been in the States long enough that he might have picked up on that, even subconsciously; if not, he knew, at least, that I wasn’t part of the Italians, the Russians, the various street gangs around the Bronx.”

“Street gangs aren’t cut across accent lines, Finch.”

“No, but you play the statistics. I had to get him past self-preservation as rapidly as possible, and money alone won’t do that. You need to convey a sense of honor, and make them think you value them as a _person_ , not merely what they can do for you.”

That was John’s first hint that Finch had studied applied psychology. It wouldn’t be the last.

During his brief convalescence, he had plenty of time to muse about the dialect that Finch had used the day they met, and which John had subsequently heard nowhere else but in the library or in his ear.

If he’d had to bet, he’d put his money on a dialect cobbled together from all the parts she liked best about various accents, with the aim of being difficult to pin down, but also unobtrusive enough that only those trained to notice accents—like John is—would pay it enough attention to pick up on the details. A dialect that she’d developed over years, carving away at the edges until it suited her in a way no commonplace accent could.

Then again, perhaps she’d put it together in a few weeks, merely to distract him from working out the more crucial details of her identity. She knew everything about him, after all; she had known that he’d start by analyzing her speech. It was no stretch to believe that she could have countered that deliberately by altering the very way she spoke.

The possibility was intriguing, and made him prize her even more.

When they realized, almost too late, the real threat in the apartment building, John got to meet another New York accent: Ms. Kestrel, an in-your-face Bronx who faced down the threat and protected Lily Thornton until John managed to get to them. Finch was spitting mad—“a shot of adrenaline,” as Finch put it later—until they had made their getaway, and then, safely back at the library, she’d broken down enough that she couldn’t climb the stairs.

“I trained in self-defense,” she admitted as they sat on the bottom steps, waiting for the shakiness to subside. “I used to be pretty good at dodging, and I could manage a few kicks, some throws and holds, even though I’m small. But now I c-can’t—I can’t move fluidly like I used to, I have to watch how I change direction, and I…” She hunched her shoulders. “I’m afraid of making it worse, of going from partial mobility to none at all.”

Having just spent the weekend in a wheelchair, John had a hint of what that might be like for her. She’d never been open about her injuries, let alone where they came from, but they clearly impacted her on a psychological level as much as a physical one.

Lacking any words of comfort, and knowing that touch would likely be unwelcome, he simply sat by her as her body slowly calmed.

So Ms. Kestrel joined the set of personas firmly rooted in the boroughs, and soon enough Ms. Moa showed up as well, a shifting Long Island accent. Where Tanager (the Brooklynite) focused attention on her surroundings, Moa used an ostentatious wardrobe and a sense of spectacle to call attention to _herself_ , often for the purposes of helping John slip in unnoticed.

* * *

When the mysterious hacker strikes at the heart of Finch’s empire, Finch drops every hint of New York in an instant and picks up accents much farther afield: Canadian, Hawaiian, Miami. They’re every bit as practiced, but not likely to be confused with any persona John has seen from her so far. The attack has her rattled, and yet she does not run; she reinvents herself.

* * *

From that point on, she let him see more of her repertoire. For the more intellectual roles, she shifted to a hint of upper-class British English (“a documented prejudice; what is predictable is therefore exploitable”). In some encounters, she varied the class markers, placing herself a little higher or lower relative to those she was interacting with. In others, she played up professional jargon; John saw her fake being a chemist, a detective, a nurse, a violinist, and a legal assistant, mostly through a combination of confidence and careful wording.

On the phone, the foreign accents flew across her tongue without hesitation or (from what he could tell) error: Russian, Indian, Portuguese, Kenyan, Korean.

“Can’t fake being Asian in person?” he’d teased one day, placing a cup of matcha by her keyboard.

“The more moving parts, the greater chance of failure,” she shot back as she took the lid off and set it beside the cup. “Besides,” she said as she got back to typing, “I do love the challenge.”

“Challenge?” John echoed. The assertion seemed backward.

Her typing paused. “There are over six thousand languages in the world, Mr. Reese. I could easily create a set of personas that varied as widely as Russian from Hawaiian. By sticking to accents from North America, I’m forced to be more imaginative about the details I build up around the dialect.”

“Scandinavian accents don’t count?”

“Oh, sometimes a little fellow-feeling is worth more than my artistic pride.”

Indeed, nuance seemed easy for her, especially how languages interrelated. In the multicultural districts, she made use of multiple variants of Irish and Hispanic dialects, along with Italian-American and one that he mentally classified as _showing off the fact that I’m studying Japanese_. On a few occasions, where John had expected her to use an accent he’d heard from her before, she instead went for one closely related: Danish for a Norwegian couple, Dutch for a family from South Africa.

And while she didn’t have the vocal range to convincingly convey a distinctly male voice, she managed—on the phone, at least—to work a passable impression of a teenage boy, a drunk man, a gay man, and a trans man just starting hormone therapy.

_(“With some people, a female voice simply won’t get the right data,” she told him. “I work with what I have.”_

_“Why not use one of those vocal shifters?”_

_“And ruin the art? Come now, Mr. Reese.”)_

One of the more interesting acts of mimicry was that of a woman who’s never heard herself speak. ( _It’s one way to get people gossiping near a stranger_ , she’d told him later.) The whole encounter was a complicated, time-consuming play: asking the clerk to speak more slowly, to repeat himself, sometimes to write things down, all while staring carefully at the man’s lips and looking just a little confused.

The moment that could have undone it all was when a customer accidentally knocked a large metal tin off a shelf—but Finch didn’t react at all, not even a flinch, and only turned to look as a reaction to the clerk’s jump.

Later, during a quick lunch, John had expressed appreciation for her self-control. But his curiosity led to follow-up questions: “What was your plan if it turned out he had a Deaf sister? Pretend that you haven’t been deaf very long?”

“Don’t be ridiculous; a person who’s gone deaf later in life has an entirely different type of accent. Mostly an issue with volume control.” She frowned. “No, I’d have to abort; my sign language isn’t nearly good enough to fake being Deaf to someone who’s _actually_ Deaf, or anyone immersed in that culture.”

John grinned into his coffee. “That’s why you started the encounter from behind the clerk.”

“Indeed. If she hadn’t reacted to sound, I’d have gone with a different gambit. Still, the risk is fairly low. Perhaps one in six hundred.”

“I thought sign language was the third most common language in the U.S.”

“Third most common language _in need of a court interpreter_ ,” she said with a wave. “Another example of how nuance never seems to follow the news.”

John blinked. “Word play, Finch? You _must_ be feeling good today.”

The tiniest hint of a smile quirking at the corner of her lips was his reward for noticing.

“In round numbers, though? Three hundred million people in the United States, half a million of them deaf, maybe half that went deaf early enough to assimilate into Deaf culture. But since most children born to Deaf parents have normal hearing, a substantial number of hearing kids grow up signing. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get accurate data, since the U.S. Census insists on treating ASL as a subset of English.”

That conversation had confirmed John’s suspicion: Finch didn’t just use language as part of her disguise, she _lived_ in it. Language was her sphere, just as spy work was his. And she was even better than he was at spotting the outlier:

“Not from Jersey, but trained to sound like it” had outed one of their first perpetrators.

“Spent time in Rikers” had cracked open a case of stolen identity.

“Her mother’s Albanian” had tied together two numbers in an unexpected way.

_(“Not the father?”_

_“Word choice, Mr. Reese. Or rather, phrase choice. That’s the sort of phrasing that women use to disguise matters in the hearing of men; I rather doubt the father alone would have brought that particular phrase from his home country. No, that’s the mark of a mother.”)_

One case had narrowed from three possibilities to one over “Get her talking about Norse Mythology,” which revealed the number’s reason for hiding as soon as she’d mentioned the world tree Yggdrasil.

* * *

It’s a comment from Fusco that gets him to wondering, and one night, as they’re packing up after a long and convoluted case, he blurts it out: “Do you ever worry about losing yourself?”

She turns to regard him. “How do you mean?”

“All these roles that you play… the faces you wear… is there a point at which the person you used to be is forever gone—or out of reach?”

Putting on her jacket, she hums for a moment, as John’s head whirls with all the people he’s been, the deeds he’s done, the handlers and partners who’ve told him over and over that his old life is dead, that all that’s left to him is to walk in the shadows, sacrifice himself to protect the people who still get to live in the light.

As Finch slides her laptop into its bag, she returns, “Do you suppose the branches fear losing the tree?”

And he’s left to ponder that as her uneven footsteps fade slowly down the hall.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Content Warnings:** Canon-typical violence; after one encounter, as Finch's adrenaline rush fades, she has something like a panic attack. At one point, Finch pretends to be Deaf.
> 
> I've spent way too much time watching YouTube videos about various accents. That was a rabbit hole that probably delayed this fic by at least a day (though, in the end, it made the overall fic much richer). It's a most interesting rabbit hole, of course; check out videos like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-en-iDeZEE), [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBtLxuv0-u8), and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-_qmeA7Q5U).
> 
> As with the [previous fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911238/chapters/37089438#workskin) about this character, if anyone would like to take Miss Kittiwake for a spin, I fully encourage it! That fic has a general list of personas, and this fic invents a few more, and I've got more in my notes that didn't make it into the fic.
> 
> I'm not sure if the "reinvents herself" means that Finch doesn't go back to the New York accents -- it might mean that she drops them for a while, then picks them back up once the coast is clear(er). Root certainly rattled her! Wonder how this is going to go once she actually meets her. I honestly don't know if I'll get around to writing a third part or not; I do like the idea of seeing how Miss Kittiwake reacts to the dangers that Finch went through.


End file.
